Watching time ‘fly’ by

Watching time fly by illustrates a new way of experiencing time. This table-clock doesn’t show you what time it is but allows one to see the passing of time. In the glass dome there is a fly, that flies exactly one circuit each minute. It is actually possible to see time flying by.

The idea is a literal approach to watching time fly by, illustrating a new way of experiencing the very threads of our society’s obsession with calendars and deadlines and milestones. Encompassed in a glass shell is a single paper creation: a fly, existing from a 500 euro bill, completing a whirlwind rotation once per minute.
I found an interview with Mark about this work.

“I was looking for a new way to give shape to a very old thing called time,” Mark writes. “Time is a given thing; I was intrigued by the value of time these days. In most of my work I try to find a new perspective on things. Not a new shape or material but the meaning behind an object or a product. Eventually when you combine different thoughts and perceptions on things you end up with a clock that doesn’t show the time, but allows you to see time flying by in a precious way.”

The interviewer shared a vision she once had heart that flight doesn’t equate speed – it equates movement. It is pulling itself forward continually, placing one step in front of another – just as we are. Time is motion and money and an exchange – an agreement between humanity that we exist in the same space and in the same moments.

Mark said to that “I have an idea on how I see these things, but what I think is not interesting,” he writes. “In this piece, it’s the viewer’s perspective that is most interesting to me.Sometimes telling everything there is to know about a work spoils it completely, because then you can never look at it the same.”

And perhaps that’s why this project is so special. Because by visualizing time, it has changed. You can never look at it the same. It’s no longer an abstract concept that is spent and wasted and shared and saved, but instead, it exists always – displayed in a glass case of repetition, creating seasons and growth. It is harnessed, wrapped in glass as a gift to be given – a gift that is not always ideal, but is enough.